BREMERTON, Wash. –
Naval Sustainment System – Shipyards champions and subject-matter experts from Puget Sound Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility and the other three U.S. Navy shipyards agreed on the next three NSS-SY sprints to pursue, during a meeting at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility in Honolulu in early July.
The three agreed-upon sprints are:
1. Daily management: This sprint is designed to optimize the flow of information on a project and align communications through a 24-hour period. The desire is to streamline priorities and coordination at the end of dayshift and determine what “winning the day” will look like the following day. The sprint will change some of the shipyard’s current practices in subtle ways, such as priorities and accountability discussions occurring in the afternoon instead of first thing in the morning. A supervisor meeting will be held for both day and swing shifts, to discuss the next 24 hours by asking three key questions: Did we win yesterday? Where do we need to be tomorrow? Who do I need to help me achieve those goals?
2. Assist trade coordination: Much of the shipyard’s workload requires multi-functional coordination, which is not always as efficient as it could be, according to Matt VanRavenhorst, NSS-SY champion for PSNS & IMF. This sprint is designed to increase the timeliness and clarity of communications between trades and Shop 26, Welders, providing Shop 26 with a visual representation of their weekly work. This sprint is the starting point for future opportunities, like trade coordination between Shop 56, Pipefitters and Shop 38, Marine Machinists; or Shop 11, Shipfitters and Code 105, Radiological Control Office.
3. Scheduling – This sprint is designed to determine if project teams can create a more accurate, executable and supported schedule by separating two key zone manager responsibilities; scheduling work and executing work. The sprint will be facilitated on USS Toledo (SSN 769) at Norfolk Naval Shipyard and will be supported by experienced zone managers and a nuclear assistant project superintendent from PSNS & IMF.
A sprint is a fast and focused effort to look at one process or part of a process to see where barriers can be removed or systems put in place to streamline the overall process. Sprints that result in quantifiable improvements will be retained and improved upon as needed. Sprints that don’t result in positive impacts will be retired and the lessons learned will be used to inform future opportunities.
VanRavenhorst said executing the three new sprints will be a collaborative effort among the NSS-SY team, Code 300, Operations; Code 900, Production Resources Department; and the USS Louisiana (SSBN 743) project team. Due to the overall time it will take to fully explore the sprints, they may be implemented on other upcoming projects in the future, such as the USS Nimitz (CVN 68) and USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) projects.
PSNS & IMF previously implemented three sprints on the Louisiana project: Operations Control Center, Start-of-Shift Communications, and Timekeeper. The Operations Control Center and Start-of-Shift Communications sprints are still being explored and scaled on other projects while the Timekeeper sprint was retired.
“The NSS-SY and department teams are capturing a lot of information about barriers that prevent our workforce from being able to start or continue their work as well as best practices that are occurring in our public shipyards today,” VanRavenhorst said. “All three of the new sprints were chosen because they address one or more of the barriers identified. As we move forward, we will try, scale and retire sprints depending on the value they create.”